Michael Darer ’15 attends a performance by Dither Electric Guitar Quartet

Michael Darer ’15 attends a performance by Dither Electric Guitar Quartet in Crowell Concert Hall on November 16, 2012.

Photo by Isabelle Selby.

It’s easy to forget the sheer variability of an instrument like the electric guitar, which has been sequestered in such a distinctive part of our musical psyche, labeled by the deluge of pop and rock that we digest almost mindlessly day to day. We assume that we’re familiar with all the instrument can do, with the heart and soul of its sound because, well, with the sheer amount of music in which it appears, it seems nonsensical to think that somewhere in the musical universe there is an electric guitar that sounds nothing like the one we know. Ridiculous and overblown a comment as this may seem, it’s really the truth for most of us. If someone asked you to imagine the sound of the instrument, most of us would probably settle on similar tones. Maybe one person would realize the harsh dynamic screeching of Rage Against the Machine, while others conjure the more open glassy chords of U2, but in the end, it would be rare for someone to imagine a piece of music that others cannot recognize as coming from the prescribed instrument.

The Dither Electric Guitar Quartet, which visited Wesleyan on Friday, November 16, however, is not content with the homogenous image that guitar music represents to most music listeners. Through complex arrangements, varying in tempo, texture and organization, they’ve striven to reinvent the guitar, and reestablish the mass of sonic possibilities at the instrument’s disposal, for all and any who will listen. Based in New York and founded in 2007, the Dither Guitar Quartet is “dedicated to an eclectic mix of experimental repertoire, spanning composed music, improvisation and electronic manipulation”, a multivalent commitment that they displayed in full disorienting force during their recent performance. I’d like to consider myself someone who is familiar, or at least interested, in a wide range of musical styles, but even I found myself consistently wowed, and altogether lost (in the best way possible) during my time with their music.

Each piece of music that Dither played seemed to wind and fold upon itself, constantly expanding and contracting, reaching piercing ethereal highs and diving into throbbing opaque depths. Sections seemed to split off from the sound of the whole before snaking back around and rejoining the flow of the composition, combining with other, seemingly disparate portions in unique and magical ways. It was almost impossible to assume where a song might be headed, and even if one did end in some place similar to what I’d imagined, the route there was festooned with detours that I never could have anticipated. Few musicians can imbue their work with the sense of organic, wholly transcendent wonder that Dither did, and those who do often require a wide range of instruments. Here, however, with four copies of one tool, the quartet managed to create expansive and varied soundscapes, each so distinct from the next.

Musical improvisation in general has always floored me. As someone who thinks about things almost obsessively, the idea of just imagining and creating simultaneously is unbelievably impressive. As such, Dither was bound to blow my mind. It was impossible to tell which sections of pieces were pre-written and which were off the cuff, how much each player anticipated from his fellows and how much each had to adapt to along the way. But rather than making the songs sound wholly rehearsed, this unreal sort of synchronicity between musicians made every note seem tenuous and energized, every stretch of sound totally ephemerally fundamental. As songs shifted from serrated distortion to stinging pop clarity, every movement, dip, sidestep and leap rang out as monumental and crucial to the integrity of the whole. Listening to music, it’s very easy to discount certain pieces while exalting others within a song, waiting for the moments that touch us and forgetting the avenues that bring us to them. With Dither, there was no danger of this. Every single moment in every single song reached out. There were no half-developed bridges, only existing in order to reach a refrain or a crescendo. Instead, everything on display was just that: on display; on display in magnificent recondite beauty.

It was somewhat intimidating to think about writing up this event, knowing how hard it would be to describe the sound of the experience. Truly, part of the power of the concert was coming upon those moments in the music that seemed to dance around description, remove themselves from any sort of context or known rooting. And that’s what made the Dither quartet so unforgettable: knowing that, even if I were to see them again, I would never recover the exact place that I was moment by moment when I first heard them; knowing that even as I was attempting to understand and remember the music, it was receding back beyond explanation, gradually revealing the next evanescent jewel, so soon to disappear.

Michael Darer ’15 reviews concert by B. Balasubrahmaniyan

Michael Darer ’15 attends a concert presented by vocalist B. Balasubrahmaniyan, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music; as well as David Nelson, Artist in Residence, and violinist L. Ramakrishnan.

David Nelson (left) and B. Balasubrahmaniyan.

One of the most frustrating things about seeing a great concert is how effortlessly the musicians seem to produce their sounds, while at the same time recognizing how complex and daunting the music truly is. As someone wholly ungifted with any sort of instrument (a deficiency for which I compensate with oppressive, too loudly aired opinions), this sort of dual recognition is especially apparent to me whenever I see truly gifted musicians perform. I find myself awed, annoyed and baffled at how incredibly deftly instrumentalists and vocalists produce their art in all its dumbfounding intricacy, while knowing that I would probably break whatever instrument they’re handling if I so much as attempted to play scales. However, there are some times, in the presence of brilliant music, when even this mental poltergeist is unable to sneak into my perception of a show. Sometimes, that seemingly incompatible ease and complexity meld together. My evening listening to B. Balasubrahmaniyan was such an occasion.

Balu, a vocalist specializing in South Indian music and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at the University, was originally supposed to perform at the Navaratri Festival in mid-October but was, unfortunately, forced to postpone due to illness. It’s a shame he wasn’t able to sing as originally scheduled, for, as someone with little knowledge of Indian music, it would have been interesting to compare his style and material to other acts, but, on the whole, I’m simply glad I got to see him at all.

With Balu that night, was Artist in Residence David Nelson, playing the mridangam (a percussion instrument featured prominently in Carnatic music, which Nelson specializes in) and violinist, L. Ramakrishnan. Sitting in a semi-circle on the stage of Crowell, the three men proceeded to produce two hours of some of the most complex, astounding music that I’ve ever heard.

Before I gush, however, a quick background on Carnatic music:

Carnatic music, which is considered one of the two major types of classical Indian music, is associated mainly with the southern part of India. It is usually performed by three individuals, one of whom is the main performer, while another provides melodic accompaniment, and the third, rhythmic accompaniment. Carnatic music is organized around four main “principles”: relationships in pitch between notes (sruti), cycles of rhythm (tala), the individual note (swara), and the overall structure of the piece (raga). These components pop up both in improvisation and scripted performance and, together, form the essential musical backbone of the genre.

When considering these four ideas, it is hard not to notice the dual emphases on individual sounds and the way in which those sounds fit into the larger sonic landscape. When listening to Balu, though I was unaware at the time of the specifics of each aforementioned principle, this was abundantly clear. Each of the three musicians produced an individually magnificent thread of sound, from Nelson’s alternating, multi-faceted tempos, to the violin’s mournful swoops, to Balu’s dynamically wavering voice. Each portion of the whole displayed unprecedented musical eloquence and, on its own, each was magnificent. However, none were really the “focus” per se. Certainly, Balu was front and center, but even his singing never dominated the trajectory of the music. Rather, the unique sounds created by the ensemble, so unique and driving on their own, flowed into one another like tributaries, bleeding together to form a whole, which constantly evolved, writhed, and drew on the diverse energies of its components. The result was nothing short of mesmerizing.

Leaving the performance, I, for the first time in a while, felt as though I had stumbled upon some sort of fundamental musical aesthetic that, if I had unknowingly been conscious of in the past, had for the longest time remained impossible to articulate. The way in which Balasubrahmaniyan and company had blended their sounds seemed elemental, as natural as the mixing of colors to create something richer. At the same time, though, the three men, the music that they played, functioned with such a respect for the depth of each part that the result seemed to transcend the mixture as well as the ingredients, reaching out past the resources that seemed available to tap into something wonderfully intricate and ethereally unified.

Michael Darer ’15 reviews Mac DeMarco at Eclectic

Michael Darer ’15 attended a concert by Mac DeMarco, who were promoting their new album, “Mac DeMarco 2.”

On October 25, 2012, Eclectic House paid host to Mac DeMarco, a little known lo-fi band (or, to some, musician with a backing band), following the release of their/his first full length LP, “Mac DeMarco 2” just nine days prior.

Mac DeMarco’s new album, “Mac DeMarco 2”

The show, opened by Featherwood Bee, followed by Yeoman’s Omen, had been one for which I’d been excited since I had heard about it. This past summer, a friend of mine had played DeMarco’s debut EP Rock and Roll Night Club for me and I was immediately intrigued. The record, which presented itself as a stew of styles and textures, some even meshed together on individual tracks, was daring and confident in ways that few debuts are. It hummed with a self-satisfied irony that might have been irritating if attempted by a less assured outfit, but that, in the hands of DeMarco and company, enlivened each song with the sort of defiant mix of humor and anxiety that defines the college experience.

When I entered the show that Thursday, I had not heard DeMarco’s newest release, a circumstance influenced by my forgetting its release date but rationalized as some sort of aesthetic choice to preserve the integrity of the live performance. Why I decided to convince myself of that, I’m still not sure.

I arrived midway through Featherwood Bee’s set, and posted myself up against once of the room’s walls to enjoy the preceding acts. Featherwood Bee has always been one of my favorite student bands and their performance that evening reminded me why. The vocals of Kelly Lee ’14, declarative yet measured mix incredibly well with the expansive rattling of the surrounding guitars, their mixture just barely concealing the driving rhythm of the drum set of Adam Johnson ’14. The resulting sound is unassuming and playful, memorable without being intrusive, such that individual moments in songs can stick out with abnormal vividness, while the rest of the song works subtly below the surface.

While I had to briefly leave the show, causing me to miss most of Yeoman’s Omen, I returned just in time to catch Mac DeMarco go on stage.

Their performance began quite slowly, songs blended and spaced unevenly in a way that prevented me from really settling in to any sort of complacency. After a while, I stopped trying to catch all of the lyrics, which was probably for the best, considering that, between wild and charged guitar chords and the residual chatter of the crowd, they became near unintelligible, and any attempt to seek them amid the mass of noise would most likely have caused me to miss what amounted to an astonishingly deliberate bouquet of sonic arrangements.

One of the most arresting features of DeMarco’s music is the contrast between the smoky, tranquil nature of the eponymous singer’s voice and the energized, at times even feral, nature of the accompanying guitars. The combination is at times hard to take, mostly so upon first listening, but once it grabs you, it will not let go.

The serenity of DeMarco’s voice at times dips into a wonderfully weary deadpan, which makes the music seem at once listless and honed, an effect only heightened by the band’s willingness to jump between seemingly disparate tones, moving from ethereal meanderings to pulsing garage rock in mere seconds.

One of the wonderful things about DeMarco as an artist is how unconcerned he seems with the categorization of his music. There’s no use arguing that one could draw clear lines of influence from his sound to that of other groups, contemporary and otherwise, but considering the sheer variety of influences such an exercise would turn up, it seems trivial. Listening to Mac DeMarco, you get the sense that the music performed is so organic, so sheer and honest; and, that, in an industry of conscious emulation and gimmick, is relief enough to be revelation.

Michael Darer ’15 reviews “Voices of Afghanistan”

Michael Darer ’15 takes on “Voices of Afghanistan,” a CFA concert hosted last Friday, September 28 in Crowell Concert Hall.

It’s very easy to take the power and ubiquity of Western music for granted. For many of us, it’s the only music we hear. When we turn on the radio, the television, when we go to the theater, the majority of the music we encounter stems from our corner of the world. Of course, this is an incredibly blinkered view and even those who find themselves beholden to it are often aware of its influence and limiting power. Even so and despite the vast opening of the world which the digital age promised to herald in, we still find ourselves immersed in the familiar.

I know that I myself am guilty of this in spades. Anyone who took an hour to explore my iPod or my computer’s music library would be hard pressed to find anything that couldn’t be, in some way, categorized as Western, European, Anglicized or something along those lines. Even the most “foreign” music that most of us encounter is filtered through a lens describable in the aforementioned terms. Hell, we’re at a place where Vampire Weekend’s use of “African” music in their own compositions is seen as groundbreaking, despite the distinctly westernized feel of the end result.

This past Friday, the Wesleyan CFA made an attempt to expand our musical horizons, as Crowell Concert Hall paid host to a magnificent performance dubbed, Voices of Afghanistan.

Voices graced its audience with a twelve song set by some of the most renowned Afghan musicians in the country, including vocalist Ustad Farida Mahwash, of whom the New York Times wrote: “[her] beautifully expressive voice retains remarkable range, flexibility, and soul-searing intensity. And her spirit continues to soar.” Accompanying Mahwash were Homayoun Sakhi, a critically acclaimed rubab (a lute-like string instrument and the national instrument of Afghanistan) player and the Sakhi ensemble. Together, the group lit up the evening with an ethereal and potent set of intricately woven songs, which both entranced and educated listeners.

When I entered Crowell that evening, I had absolutely no background on Afghan music, whatsoever. In the past, I’d heard bits and pieces of different music from the general region but I’d never been given much information on those snippets and certainly didn’t have the chance to sit down and analyze any of them.

According to the group’s website, which has been incredibly helpful in giving me background on their stylistic rooting, much Afghan music is based on a dialogue of questions and answers, known as sawol-jawab. Though not limited to music, the concept has found itself deeply ingrained in much of the work that the Voices ensemble does.  Suggesting that only the most thoughtful questions can truly find answers, sawol-jawab, creates an incredibly complex lyrical and thematic foundation within many pieces of Afghan music.

The result, as displayed on Friday, is nothing short of breathtaking. Each of the pieces played possessed a unique rhythm and texture, a wholly distinct relationship between the instruments and vocals, as well as an individualized relationship between the instruments themselves.

Many, if not most, of the songs rested on Homayoun Sakhi’s rubab, which provided the pieces with a galloping energy, its twang both earthy and electric. Throughout each and every piece Sakhi displayed an incredible sensibility for the passions of his fellow musicians, surging and backing off in volume at various points so that the sounds of other instruments might poke through to deepen and expand the disposition of the music.

The most arresting feature of the music, however, came from the vocals as provided by Mahwash. Whereas a great deal of music tends to segregate vocals from instruments, this was not the case with Voices. Mahwash’s crisp lyrical voice swooped and dove alongside the cascading strings, weaving amongst the different sounds until it seemed like just another instrument. Despite my inability to understand the language, Mahwash pulled me in like few singers I’ve witnessed. Her voice itself seemed to be the meaning of the lyrics, a visceral poetry that transcended whatever literal meaning her words conveyed.  As it wound its way around the jack-rabbiting melodies, I felt as though I was within the music, surrounded by the labyrinthine compositions, as they exploded outwards from the instruments.

The group’s website explains to readers that Afghanistan “is home to a stunning array of musical genres. Each is distinct, yet they all share a vibrancy and depth indicative of their importance in the larger fabric of society.” Over the years, the site reveals, these various genres have intermixed, classical pooling into folk song, and traded an increasing number of motifs and techniques. When listening to Voices, this is not hard to believe. The beauty of the music filling Crowell that night was not simply it’s overarching sound, but rather, the underpinnings beneath each grand note, the feeling that below every superficial sonic gesture were thousands upon thousands of cogs in one great musical machine, that as the compositions pushed forward they did so naturally, hundreds of symphonic organs pulsing and prodding, each an individual contributing to the showcase on display.

The true wonder of the music that I heard on Friday was that each piece existed simultaneously as one solid experience and as the sum of many smaller movements, sounds, and sensations, working together. While seeming deceptively simple, each song seemed to cover immense ground and touch on more than seemed possible given only six musicians.

Even for those who may not have been as wildly enthusiastic as I was about the show, I would posit that something, even if it was just one thing, of interest poked it’s head out of that music to grab the attention of each listener. I would guess that each and every audience member found something in that music that they hadn’t seen or heard or felt before, didn’t have access to in their familiar musical repertoire. And if I’m right about that, even if I’m wrong about everything else I felt about this music, then I think Voices of Afghanistan can be called a resounding success.

Michael Darer ’15 attends R. Stevie Moore at Eclectic

Michael Darer ’15 reflects on his experiences at an Eclectic concert presented by R. Stevie Moore, on Saturday, September 22.

I couldn’t help but feel out of place, walking up the steps to Eclectic that Saturday night, the only one of my friends unversed in just who or what R. Stevie Moore, actually was. When I had prodded them around the table during dinner at Usdan, they had urged me to just wait, that they wouldn’t be able to explain. Occasionally, someone would throw out a generalized description, usually orbiting around some variation of “father of lo-fi music” but on the whole, my inquiries did me no good. We can’t explain him, they told me, sharing smiles almost conspiratorially between assurances that I would in fact enjoy myself.

In retrospect, they were right to announce their inability to make sense of what we would be seeing and hearing later that night. Any description they would have given would probably have seemed wholly incongruent with the end product and any accurate rendering of the man or his music would have ended with only deeper confusion on my part. In some ways, this is all very unfortunate, considering that I now find myself here in a similar position, self-tasked with painting a picture of an experience so weird and transcendent and disconcertingly beautiful that to actually present it accurately would entail a neutering and a draining of those in-the-moment energies that made the affair so, if you’ll pardon the seeming hyperbole, magical.

As one totally uneducated about R. Stevie Moore until very recently, I would feel awkward lecturing about the man’s background or oeuvre with any sort of expert’s confidence. In truth, all one really needs to know is that Moore is known both for how prolific he is (having released numerous albums through labels in addition to over 400 cassettes and CD-R albums independently) and how genre spanning his music tends to be. He’s dabbled in lo-fi and punk, power pop and spoken word, jazz, new wave, experimental rock. In many ways, it would appear that Moore’s music defies the concept of genre, that any successful attempts to pinpoint the trappings of a specific musical culture within his output are purely incidental.

When I got to Eclectic that Saturday night (late enough to miss the opener, early enough to still get soaked by rain on the trip over), the atmosphere into which I entered was absolutely otherworldly. The entire house, including those areas not in use, was permeated by an oddly charged calm, like a coiled spring was nestled beneath each and every molecule of air. Weaving throughout the space were trills of guitar, which seemed to move between the audience members. On the stage stood the man himself, clad in pajamas and looking like Santa Claus after a particularly rough weekend. Oddly enough, the first thing that came to my mind was Ethan Hawke’s description of Walt Whitman in ‘Dead Poets Society’: “a sweaty toothed madman with a stare that pounds my brain”.

On either side of Moore were two other musicians, whose clothes would be incrementally shed throughout the remainder of the performance. The trio seemed weirdly distant from one another and somewhat detached from the world beyond their small stage.

The music that they made over the next few hours was some of the strangest and most wonderful that I’ve heard in a long time, ricocheting back and forth between ethereal and prayerful strands of melody that hung out in the air like newborn birds, vulnerable, petite, in danger of being swallowed up by the stirring vigor of the sweaty crowd and raging forests of sonic bedlam, where individual notes dissolved in a hungry aural clamor which tore around the room in bouncing, clawing strides.

Every so often Moore would interrupt himself to say something, most of which was indecipherable. At one point he seemed to complain about the quality of the house’s PA system (confirmed by the Wesleying blog article on the event) before praising the crowd. While to the musicians these may have seemed like digressions, for me, they were no different than any other portion of the performance, bits of coarse sonic expression spit out for the audience to absorb into our own mass of noise. Every bit of sound that left that plinth on which the band stood seemed so indisputably organic, so fundamental and essential to myself and every other person standing near me, that even when I had no idea what was being sang, said or done (which was often, considering the bustle), I felt like I had known it would happen before it did, as though it were just some magnificently externalized somatic process, splayed out in exquisitely tinted tones for my befuddled enjoyment.

And Moore must have felt something like this as well, for it was not long before any trappings of a standard show were abolished. R. Stevie at one point found himself wandering over to play the Eclectic piano and, right before the show was broken up by Public Safety officers, stumbled out into the crowd for no apparent reason.

Leaving with the rest of the crowd, I felt as though I was taking a bit of the performance with me back to my dorm, while, at the same time, I was struck by the realization that what I had experience could only ever exist in a place and moment that had since dissolved. Certainly, the most meaningful things, especially those rooted in art embody similar qualities: an ephemeral truth that somehow strives to survive beyond the boundaries of its prescribed universe. For as long as I can, I intend to nurse this experience as best I can, even though I know it will eventually fade away. In life and in music, I can’t think of a better thing to feel.